


tell me nothing lasts (like i don't know)

by mouwwie



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Hurt, M/M, Nick is sad and gay, This is Sad you guys, nothing to see here just crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouwwie/pseuds/mouwwie
Summary: Adoring Jay Gatsby was natural; this tingling feeling in my chest never left, yet I assumed that was how everyone felt. After all, Jay Gatsby was created to be worshipped, full of light and shimmer and swoon, like a beautiful mirage, a merely present image of something you always dreamt of but would never acquire.But as dreams tend to wither, he did too, and in the middle of the empty funeral it stung.Or, Nick visits Gatsby's grave for the last time.
Relationships: Nick Carraway/Jay Gatsby
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	tell me nothing lasts (like i don't know)

**Author's Note:**

> Only CW is for death because - surprise - Gatsby is very dead and no one is happy here

Where my father taught me to reserve all judgement towards people, my mother taught me to look straight into my own heart and be sincere with it. And somehow by the age of thirty I failed at both.

Sincerity doesn’t cost much in the world of the wealthy; unfortunately for me, I learned it the hard way. It’s hard to pinpoint the moment where it struck me but I truly think it was something I realized from the beginning but hid away in hope that it was one of the many illusions that were about to perish.

This, and my boundless fondness of Gatsby.

Adoring Jay Gatsby was natural; this tingling feeling in my chest never left, yet I assumed that was how everyone felt. After all, Jay Gatsby was created to be worshipped, full of light and shimmer and swoon, like a beautiful mirage, a merely present image of something you always dreamt of but would never acquire. 

But as dreams tend to wither, he did too, and in the middle of the empty funeral it stung.

Yet some part of me believed he never belonged to earth in the first place, there was a certain divine aspect to him, a particular unexplainable awe that rushed through you in his visage. I always knew that he was a hopeless romantic but it was also quite contagious, as something in him never left and stayed in my heart, ready to lead me towards the bright hopeful future he was so eagerly pursuing.

Him and Daisy were beautiful together, and they fit each other well. Two people of light, born from something that was too powerful to name, and while it was a tragedy, it was surely a romance of which people sing, or write books, or compose music. Sometimes, when a drink hit me hard in certain evenings, I dared to imagine myself next to him, and instead of Daisy’s pristine figure there was mine.

I knew it was silly but part of me dared to wish that it was me who spinned across the marble floor in his incoherent festive of a house.

Angular and lanky, I was nothing compared to the religious experience Gatsby once was. Was, because if saints would rise back from the grave, Jay Gatsby was still dead, and the image of a hopeful romantic dream I once pictured slowly but surely decayed next to him.

Of which, I was sure, Jay Gatsby would never approve.

I stopped visiting his grave only months later, when the usual bleakness of my house truly got into my head, and the whiskey bottles found their way onto every surface in my small house, now awkward as ever, stuck next to the haunting image of the long-over celebration. That was when I knew I had to leave New York, unless I desire to be eaten alive by the vultures that were now my thoughts.

This was the last time I would call Jay Gatsby’s name out loud, letting it sink into the ruthless stone of the tomb. A single daisy quivered over the soil above him, and that was when I turned back and left, holding back from stomping the flower into the ground.

There are things, and wounds, I suppose, that never change for the better.


End file.
